Here are a ton of photos:

http://www.justanothersoldier.com/blog040521.htm

Some ICDC guys being less than completely useful

Main street, Ad Dujayl, as viewed from the turret of a Humvee

Socky is now a paratrooper. Today he earned his Airborne wings with three day jumps and two night jumps.

In the photo above, Kirk stands before one of the dark entrances to the underground complex.

Our exit from this twisted level of Doom.

Atop the bunker, lazily keeping watch. We could see for miles with nothing in sight. We prayed that someone would try to attack us because it would have been an excellent excuse to effectively use pretty much every weapon system we had with us.

The view from binoculars.

The kids who brought the tea and bread. Kirk on the left, Rubin on the right.

For a grunt, the sound of close air support is very comforting, here in the form of an Apache Longbow keeping an eye on things as we set up our perimeter for the morning’s operation.

This is what used to be a Baath party office building located on Highway 1, not far from our base. It got hammered, as you can see, during the invasion, and continued to be used by assholes to fire on convoys due to its close proximity to the highway. A lot of units had made it standard procedure to fire it up whenever they passed it, but this drew the ire of the people who live behind it since that’s where half the rounds would land as they sailed through the open floors. On this day it was decided it would be flattened. It was my platoon’s duty to secure the site while the engineers did their thing, emplacing all the explosives. Once they were done and the notorious “Baath House” was felled, all that remained was the elevator shaft, much to the chagrin of the engineers.

Next to the Baath House was a complex of military buildings, also razed during the invasion. It was here that the engineers parked the flatbed tractor trailers that carried their massive bulldozers and where my security post for the morning was. A few of the buildings still stand, this one sans roof, and make good places for bored soldiers to take pictures of themselves. This is me and Wazina with an awesome stencil of Saddam behind us.

This is Chris with Melissa, perched atop the Humvee known as Malibu Barbie, providing overwatch for the morning’s raid.

The family of the house we raided. The woman in the foreground is cryinq/praying while rocking back and forth.